Species

Job

Physical Appearance

Your standard Skutter. "Sleek box" body, claw head supported by a joined metal neck. She is painted purple-pink, and has deep purple optics.

On occasion she will don "clothing", usually for formal occasions. Scarfs and hats, mostly.

Personality and Interests

Having been active for well over 3,000,000 years (2,999,980 past her factory lifespan), The Missus has developed sentience (she had virtual sentience before the accident, but now it's honest-to-god human like sentience). According to inspection notes, she had semi-sentience shortly after coming online, due to a minor bug, but was affixed with safeguards to prevent self-awareness. The safeguards burned out sometime during Blue Dwarf's voyage.

She is very caring to those close to her. She is a good person to talk to in tough times, and will lend a hand (or, claw) when one needs help. However, she will not tolerate attitude, violence, or belligerence and will vehemently (verbally) shred anyone to pieces that ticks her off.

The Missus is a very caring mother to her eight children. She will ensure that they have absolutely everything they need, and will try to provide them MOST of what they want (they do have to earn it, after all). She is, however, strict with her rule-setting and will gladly lay down punishment if any of the Pritchard children cross her. She is very defensive of her family and will take down anyone that tries to harm them, to the best of her limited abilities.

Being a lab Skutter, the Missus was programmed with high intelligence and wisdom. Over the millions of years of inactivity aboard Blue Dwarf, she took to maintaining the science facilities. During this time she also took it upon herself to study the archives of information left behind by the deceased/hibernating staff members, and learned quite a bit over the years. She has a wide knowledge-base on numerous scientific topics, and has easy access to more through the ship's database. She is capable of conducting basic scientific operations, usually to help her husband's work. She is, however, starting her own work.

In terms of interests, the Missus has always been fond of film. She spent her spare time watching older movies from the ship's archives, and took to writing her own screenplays (all of them in binary) just to pass the time. While she has little free time now, thanks to her job and her eight children that require constant surveillance, she still finds time to enjoy a movie or two. She rarely has time, but she still squeezes in time to continue experimenting with screenplay writing.

The Missus, while a technical member of the crew, never leaves Blue Dwarf to embark on missions. She is ill-equipped for hazardous environments and isn't built to take much punishment (her HAZMAT and shock units can only take so much). Instead, she stays behind to tend to the labs and watch the Pritchard children while Artemis is away. She does, however, go on pleasure trips with the crew, if there is somewhat of a guarantee of safety.

Being a Skutter, she originally didn't speak English, instead using "Audible Binary Language"...or Skutt-Speak (think R2-D2 mixed with a dial-up modem). She and the children were upgraded with the drivers and hardware to speak fluent English (they can be programmed with other languages, if need be).

History

The Missus was constructed at the Charon Labs Manufacturing Plant on Charon (Pluto's Moon) at an unknown date, between 5-10 years before Blue Dwarf's final departure from Earth. According to the inspection notes on file in the JMC/Blue Dwarf database, she had anomalously high intelligence, and showed signs of true sentience due to a minor bug in her AI Matrix. She was affixed with special safeguards that would inhibit higher-level thought and self-awareness, and was cleared for purchase.

She, along with dozens of other, similar models, were purchased by the Jupiter Mining Company to replace numerous Skutters that Dr. Artemis Pritchard VI had "accidentally" destroyed during experimentation. They arrived on Blue Dwarf some years before the final voyage.

She worked in the Innovative Sciences lab alongside Dr. Pritchard and Frank Cadbury, receiving Artemis' scorn for her defiance. When Artemis finally ended up lobotomizing his skutters, she was spared due to her defiance, which had Earned Artemis' respect.

The two had grown closer as the years passed. However, their friendship was cut short by an accident that supposedly killed both Cadbury and Pritchard (the former being discovered alive during an incident involving Artemis' rival, and the latter simply being frozen and kept alive thanks to his numerous implants). She was unable to enter the Innovative Sciences Lab after the accident, and couldn't reach the other sectors to get help (on account of JMC sabotage). In the days following the ISL accident, the crew was forced into stasis by a radiation leak.

The Missus, after some time, was able to restore most of the science division to operational status, and continued her work, mostly alone, for the next millennia.

She avoided the re-awakened crew, mostly trying to continue her work without getting involved in whatever the crew was up to. However, upon Artemis' thawing, The Missus happily returned to work with him.

Their friendship grew to a "scientific attraction", and the two ended up marrying. They started their life together, achieving a few milestones such as moving in together. However, they found themselves unable to have children (the whole man-robot thing kinda prevented that).

After an accident left Artemis without a body, he was forced into a special robotic body. Suddenly, Artemis found himself 'compatible' with his wife, and the pair had eight children.

Today, The Missus continues to work side-by-side with her husband and raise her children.

Favourite Sayings

"IF ONE OF YOU DOESN'T TELL ME WHO SMEARED COOLANT ON THE WALL, YOU'RE ALL GROUNDED!"

"Yes, I'm aware that Artie Jr's math is flawed, I just don't have the heart to tell him yet"

"Why do you have Bill Clinton's name tattooed on your back?"

"Artie...wake up. You're not leaving me with eight kids and hundreds of boxes of hazardous experiments...."